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The Day Before Christmas
| producer = | screenplay = | story = Phil Lord | based on = | starring = | music = | editing = Robert Fisher Jr. | production companies = * Lord Miller Productions * Pascal Pictures * The Kerner Entertainment Company * Rideback * The SPA Studios (Sergio Pablos Animation) * Vertigo Entertainment }} | distributor = Sony Pictures Releasing | released = | runtime = 104 minutes | country = United States | language = English | ratings = PG (MPAA) | budget = $90 million | gross = $375.5 million }} The Day Before Christmas is an 2020 American computer-animated Christmas comedy film produced by Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation and The SPA Studios in association with Movie Land Animation Studios, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film was directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman from a screenplay by Phil Lord and Rothman, and a story by Lord. It stars the voices of Ryan Potter, John Goodman, Gal Gadot, Tenzing Norgay Trainor, J. K. Simmons, Jamie Chung, Hailee Steinfeld, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Josh Gad and Shameik Moore. The Day Before Christmas had its world premiere at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles on November 3, 2020, and was theatrically released in the United States on November 20. It grossed over $375 million worldwide against a $90 million budget. It received praise for its animation, characters, story, voice acting, humor and soundtrack. Plot Cast * Ryan Potter as Jack * John Goodman as Matthew * Gal Gadot as Carrie * Tenzing Norgay Trainor as Emma * J. K. Simmons as Josh * Jamie Chung as Sarah * Hailee Steinfeld as Vanessa * Bex Taylor-Klaus as Mike * Josh Gad as William * Shameik Moore as Danny Production Development Movie Land Animation Studios had already begun the process of starting development of movies with budgets of around $320 million. The intellectual property for these films was meant to be supplied by Movie Land Animation Studios among others and included Penguinopolis, Smash of Claws, The Animals in the Attic and Stickman 2: Larry's Adventure had been approaching the original crew from the television series to make a high-profile, animated theatrical feature-length film adaptation and had long wanted to partner with Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation to release the film given the network's extraordinary legacy in the world of animation, including some of the most enduring characters on cable television history. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, who previously worked on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, was hired to direct the film on November 30, 2016, and the studio fast-tracked production to start in 2017. Peter Ramsey agreed to make a feature film version of the show with the promise it would be the first of a planned trilogy. During development stages of the film, he and his co-director Joaquim Dos Santos, and co-writer Conrad Vernon, intended to revisit some of the greatest films of the time, with Smurfs: The Lost Village, The Emoji Movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Animals in the Attic having the core inspirations for the film. Writing In March 2016, Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Tom McGrath and Rodney Rothman revealed via Twitter that he had begun writing the screenplay for the film along with Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman. Pre-production Pre-production officially began in the United Kingdom by early December 2015. That same month, director Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Tom McGrath and Rodney Rothman stated that the film will be another great love story with a new love interest being cast. The next month, production designer Justin K. Thompson was announced to be designing the film's production designer, as well as Rita Ryack, also making the movie as costume designer. Animation As with The Star, Sony Pictures Animation will have the animation produced by another studio other than Sony Pictures Imageworks, which handles digital production for most of SPA's films. For this film, Grossology is animated by Movie Land Digital Production Services in San Francisco, California and its sister facilities in Jalisco, Mexico, by combining Movie Land Digital Production Services' computer animation pipeline with CGI animation production techniques inspired by the book created by Sylvia Branzei and will also be animated in a combination of motion capture along with photo-realistic computer animation, just like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Visual effects The CGI environment, CGI animation, and visual effects were also provided by Movie Land Digital Production Services, which is supervised by Eric Saindon and Richard Hollander. The film utilizes "virtual-reality tools", per visual effects supervisor William Renschen. Virtual production supervisor Girish Balakrishnan said on his professional website that the filmmakers used motion capture and VR/AR technologies, with the production team combining VR technology with cameras in order to film the remake in a VR-simulated environment. New software had to be developed for the movie, and made it possible to create scenes with a shaky-cam look of a handheld camera, to make the film seem as realistic as it can be similar to a television series. Sanford Panitch, Columbia Pictures's President of Production, called the film's visual effects "a new form of filmmaking", and felt that "Historical definitions don't work", stating that "it uses some techniques that would traditionally be called animation, and other techniques that would traditionally be called live-action. It is an evolution of the technology used in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water". Rather than animators do everything, the team also used artificial intelligence to allow virtual characters behave in ways that mimicked real human beings. Design The crew used the same processes from the original television series in the making of the film, most notably the 'skroutlines', which was a seamless blend of a more traditional screenplay with a more simple outline which resembled strong short stories and gave the storyboard artists such as Maurice Fontenot, Abigail Nesbitt and Guy Moore all the creative and aesthetic freedom neccessary. Warburton and Willems themselves provided the film's animatics. It took around a year for two animators to create 10 seconds of footage that reflected the producers's vision; the animation work developed from there. During initial development, the directors worked with a single animator to establish the film's look. This number eventually grew to 60 animators during production. It became clear that this would not be enough to complete the film on time, so the crew was expanded further. The number had reached 142 animators by February 2019 and at one point to 177 animators, the largest animation crew that Movie Land Digital Production Services had ever used for a film. Animation work was completed in April 28, 2019. The CGI and hand-drawn animation for the film was combined with "line work and painting and dots and all sorts of comic book techniques" to make it look like it was created by hand, which was described as "a living painting". This was achieved by artists taking rendered frames from the CGI animators and working on top of them in 2D, with the goal of making every frame of the film "look like a comic panel". Lord described this style of animation as "totally revolutionary", and explained that the design combines the in-house style of Sony Pictures Animation with the "flavor" of digital artists such as Christopher Arambulo Cosgrove and Chris Lawrence. The directors all felt that the film would be one of the few that audiences actually "need" to watch in 3D due to the immersive nature of the animated world created, and the way that the hand-drawn animation elements created specifically for the film create a unique experience; Persichetti described this experience as a combination of the effects of an old-fashioned hand-drawn multiplane camera and a modern virtual reality environment. Technology PIX System provided the production crew with secure access to production content and project management throughout the suite of devices used. Music In August 2018, Henry Jackman, James Newton Howard, Lorne Balfe and Daniel Pemberton, who was collaborated with Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, Amy Pascal, Avi Arad, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, was announced to compose the film's score. The soundtrack will be available for purchase on digital on November 12, 202p and on Compact Disc on November 22, 202p by Atlantic Records. The film score will be available for purchase on digital and CD on the same date as digital by Sony Classical Records. Release The Day Before Christmas was released by Sony Pictures Releasing under its Columbia Pictures label on November 20, 2020. Sony premiered the film at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles on November 3, 2020. Reception Box office The Day Before Christmas grossed $190.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $185.3 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $375.5 million, against a production budget of $90 million. In the United States and Canada, The Day Before Christmas was released, and was projected to gross $30–35 million from 3,813 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $12.6 million on its first day, including $3.5 million from Thursday night previews, and went on to debut to $35.4 million, finishing first at the box office and marking the best-ever December opening for an animated film. The film made $16.7 million in its second weekend, finishing fourth behind newcomers Spider-Man: Far From Home, Abominable, The Addams Family and Playing with Fire, and then $18.3 million in its third weekend, finishing fourth again. In its fifth weekend the film made $13 million, finishing in fourth for a third straight week. The weekend following its Best Animated Picture win, the film was added to 1,661 theaters (for a total of 2,104) and made $2.1 million, marking a 138% increase from the week before. Critical response On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 97%, based on 369 reviews, with an average rating of 8.77/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse matches bold storytelling with striking animation for a purely enjoyable adventure with heart, humor, and plenty of superhero action." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare average grade of "A+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 90% overall positive score and an 80% "definite recommend", as well as a rare 5 star rating. David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "B+" and called it "hilarious and ultimately even poignant", writing: "An eye-popping and irreverent animated experience from the marvelous comic minds who brought you 21 Jump Street... Into the Spider-Verse is somehow both the nerdiest and most inviting superhero film in a long time; every single frame oozes with fan service..." Oliver Jones of The New York Observer gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars and wrote, "The greatest triumph and biggest surprise of the film is that it is an LSD freak-out on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey." Johnny Oleksinski of The New York Post gave the film a 3.5 rating out of 4, hailing the film as "the best stand-alone film to feature the iconic character so far", and praising Miles's characterization as "more fleshed out than the usual Marvel heroes". Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com praised the film's atmosphere and visual effects, saying the film "has a wonderfully trippy, dreamlike quality about it." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "...the freshest and most stimulating aspect of the film is the visual style, which unites the expected Marvel mix of 'universes' (it used to be assumed there was only one universe in creation) with animation that looks both computer-driven and hand-drawn, boasts futuristic as well as funky urban elements, moves the 'camera' a lot and brings together a melting pot of mostly amusing new characters." William Bibbiani of The Wrap felt the film "represents some of the best superhero storytelling on the market", and that it "captures the sprawling interconnectivity of comic-book universes in a way that no other feature film has", calling it the best Spider-Man film since Spider-Man 2. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times said that "What distinguishes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in the end is that it takes its mission seriously, even when it's being transparently silly". David Sims of The Atlantic said that the film "somehow, through sheer creative gumption, does something new in the superhero genre", particularly praising the use of comic book's "visual language", as well as the characters' dynamic, and felt that the "anarchic fingerprints" of producers Lord and Miller were "all over the movie". Katie Walsh of Tribune News Service said that the film is "unlike any other superhero or animated film that has come before", comparing the animation to "watching a comic book come to life", and feeling that the film "firmly exists in a post-''Deadpool'' environment, where it seems the only fresh way into a century-old superhero is to skewer the tropes, make fun of the merchandising and acknowledge the cultural significance of it all in a cheeky and self-reflective manner", and that Lord, who wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay, was "The key to the balance of self-aware and sweet" present in the film. Industry response Tom Holland, who plays Parker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, praised the film as "one of the coolest films has ever seen," while Holland's MCU co-star Chris Pratt, who also worked with Lord and Miller in ''The Lego Movie'' films, called it an "emotionally moving, cutting edge, progressive, diverse, funny, meta, action-packed, silly, visually stunning masterpiece!" Patton Oswalt, who also worked with Lord and Miller on 22 Jump Street, called the film "brilliant" and continued "This has been a non-stop year for me and I'm glad I'm ending it in such a cinematic high-note. Not only is it the best superhero film ever made, it's flat-out a game-changing MOVIE. Seeing it again tomorrow!" Kevin Smith reviewed the film on his podcast Fatman Beyond, stating, "I always liked Spider-Man but this movie made me love Spider-Man on a Batman-type level", and continued saying, "It just goes to show you that any character in the right hands can be a transformative experience." Barry Jenkins, writer and director of the Academy Award-winning film Moonlight which also starred Ali, praised the film calling it "magnificent"; citing it as the best Spider-Man film, one of the best films of 2018, and the best tentpole film since Edge of Tomorrow. Jenkins continued, saying, "I was stupefied. I mean just tremendous, tremendous work, so grounded and full of verve; visceral. Saw it on the biggest screen I could find, just a viscerally enthralling experience. I salute you." Rian Johnson, writer and director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, described the film as "the Velvet Underground of superhero movies" as he believes it will be an influential film. References External links TBA Category:2020 films Category:2020 3D films Category:2020 computer-animated films Category:2020 animated films Category:2020 adventure films Category:American Christmas films Category:Animated Christmas films Category:2020s Christmas films Category:Columbia Pictures films Category:Columbia Pictures animated films Category:Sony Pictures Animation films Category:Movie Land Animation Studios films Category:Films produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller Category:Films produced by Dan Lin Category:Films featuring anthropomorphic characters Category:Films using computer-generated imagery Category:Films produced by Avi Arad Category:Films produced by Amy Pascal Category:Films produced by Roy Lee Category:Films with screenplays by Rodney Rothman Category:Films scored by Henry Jackman Category:Films scored by James Newton Howard Category:Films scored by Lorne Balfe Category:Films scored by Daniel Pemberton Category:American 3D films Category:3D animated films